I'm cheap, so I mostly stick with good old fashioned fertile soil since it is available here. Also there is sort of a philosophy to it. When I see how fertile the soil is, I think it is a shame to add a bunch of stuff to it. In most cases, I don't think I would get better results anyway. If I sense that the soil is sour, I'll add some agricultural limestone, but that's it.
This is the second year in a row I have grown one plant in a garbage heap. That's the closest I come to fertilizing. I just keep adding garbage to the mound every so often - potato peelings, old bananas and/or peelings, watermelon and cantaloupe rinds, left over rice, veggies, beans, bad milk, uprooted weeds, wood ashes, wild mushrooms, termite-eaten logs, whatever. I start off by digging a hole. If I have some old hamburger meat or something that goes in the bottom. Then I layer it with good topsoil, leaves, and miscellaneous refuse. The plant goes in the middle and I add garbage and dirt to the mound every so often. Talk about worms!
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